Breakfast with Sports Center

My 12-year-old gets up at 6 a.m., gets dressed, then goes downstairs and eats his breakfast while watching Sports Center on ESPN. Monday morning the news stations were showing Florida Panthers forward Richard Zednik getting sliced in the neck by a teammates’ skate in a freak accident. At first I was going to warn him about the graphic content of the video when I saw it earlier in the morning. But my husband and I talked about it and decided this was something he should see. Too often my son goes out on the ice and “forgets” his neck guard. Hockey, like many contact sports, requires parents to get the best protective gear they can afford with the right fit. Wearing poorly fitting pads or forgetting neck guards can be a mistake with terrible consequences. Doctors said the skate blade just missed cutting the jugular vein. Luckily, Zednik — who lost five units of blood — is recovering well.